Weekend Travel Thread: Count Floyd Edition [Y-not]

It's October!

"Oooh, scarrrry!"

I agree with Count Floyd, Tip O'Neill was scary!

In honor of the upcoming Halloween* holiday, today's edition of the Travel Thread features the world's creepiest attractions:

Torture Museum, Amsterdam

This small and unabashedly lowbrow museum chronicles historical torture methods in displays that are not for the squeamish. Fans of Middle Age brutality can admire the agonizing "skull cracker," the limb-dislocating rack, and that most efficient of killing machines, the guillotine.

Truly Creepy: The disturbing illustrations include one of a naked man hung from his ankles like a wishbone and being sawed in half lengthwise.

Sedlec Ossuary, Czech Republic

Step into this 15th-century Gothic church located in Kutna Hora, about 90 minutes outside Prague, and you'll immediately think its creator, 19th-century woodcarver Frantisek Rint, got his decorating degree at the University of Hades. The basement-level chapel contains 40,000 skeletons fashioned into skull candelabras, a towering coat of arms, and one seriously morbid chandelier.

Truly Creepy: A garland of gap-eyed skulls hangs from the vaulted ceilings, and the massive bone pyramids put "40,000 skeletons" into perspective.

Mutter Museum, Philadelphia

Run by the centuries-old College of Physicians of Philadelphia, this museum manages to be scientific, shocking and creepy as it chronicles the abnormalities and diseases that ravage human flesh. Exhibits include a gangrenous hand, syphilis-riddled bones, diseased livers and a gargantuan 40-pound colon. Skeletons of giants, dwarfs and Siamese twins, plus sliced sections of a human head, complete the visual assault.

Truly Creepy: The Soap Lady's 19th-century remains that turned into a soap-like substance called adipocere, also known as "grave wax."

Follow the link for more creepy attractions.

I've been to the Mutter Museum, on a school field trip of all things.

Another mildly creepy place I've visited is the pet cemetery in Lisbon's zoological park. Something about stumbling into a graveyard of dead pets when we were walking around a zoo seemed "off" somehow.

I also think wax museums are creepy, probably because of seeing Vincent Price's House of Wax movie at an impressionable age.

Aside from traveling during the era Obama's House of Ebola, what spooky or creepy travel experiences have you had?

*Is it just me or is Halloween a much bigger deal nowadays than it was in the 70s and 80s? I remember there being one or two houses on our street that would do up Halloween big (with decorations and spooky sound effects), but nothing like I see these days.

We also have several really prominent Halloween-themed amusement parks around here, including a Haunted Circus and a Haunted factory.

posted by Open Blogger at 02:00 PM

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